Dismantling the culture of a once best performing school

Tshwarelo Hosia | Monday October 30, 2023 06:00

There are few schools, if any, that have established effective and all weather systems that serve different generations of students with distinction. School systems, for various reasons, blow hot and cold.

Consistency has becoming a moving target for many schools. But at the helm of a school is a school principal deployed to build academic excellence. Some are shouldering their responsibilities with distinction and others are not doing so well.

It takes hawkish eyes, attention to details and extreme vigilance for a leader to realise that a system that appeared water tight is beginning to be porous and heading in the wrong direction.

If not addressed and closed, small and seemingly negligible cracks can develop, magnify, multiply and drive into the abyss a well-established and properly governed school. Presently there is no debate about the universally acceptable status of Selebi-Phikwe as a paragon of academic excellence but one has to dig deep into the archives to persuade the young generation that Moeng College, now reduced to a shadow of its former glory, was once a top achieving institution.

The change of fortune that schools experience can be so dramatic and profound. This brings home the painful and stark reality that it is possible for a seemingly waterproof and invincible school system to fall from grace and sadly crash into pieces beyond recognition. It takes great efforts and sacrifices to build an achieving culture but the biggest enemy than run down an institution is complacency. Another issue is watering down the central role school principals play in the creation of a good school culture. Whose responsibility is it to sustain a top notch performing school culture? It is the principal’s job as much as it is everyone’s job. It is a collective responsibility and all principal actors must be switched on to jealously guard, defend, protect and preserve the integrity of a successful school culture, from the very closest man or woman at the helm of a school (the school principal) to the distant support system pulling the strings behind scenes in the Central ministry and regional oversight institutions.

How the principal is executing his functions is a matter of life and survival. The work of a school principal is there for everyone to see and judge but what support systems are doing behind closed doors away from the prying eyes may never be known or subjected to public scrutiny. But what is important is that all decisions taken for and about a school are critically important for the sustenance and very survival of a well-functioning system. In the public education system, no one owns a school. And no principal, however successful may be, is guaranteed a permanent stay in a school. Public schools apply a system of rotation of school principals.

Given the vastness and varying geographical circumstances of our country, it is only fair and proper to deploy a system of rotation. It gives school principals a feel of every piece of the country from remote, rural, urban, least to well developed. This arrangement has created very mobile school principals who like furniture can find themselves taking different positions in the house. A school is as strong as its school principal. I am one of the students who witnessed what a change of guard can do to a school.

The departure of the now UB don, Professor Bernard Moswela from Moeng College was arguably the one single factor that dramatically shook the foundation and altered adversely the performance trajectory of the institution. There are many other examples of schools which served students well but fizzled out under new administrators who unwittingly deleted working and effective cultures that their predecessors bequeathed them. The lesson learnt from this experience is that the relevant departments should rethink the deployment strategy to ensure a change of guard when contemplated takes into consideration issues of performance. T

here is this flawed thinking that once a culture of high performance has been established, any leader from outside can walk into a school and run it the way it is used to be run. It does not work that way. It is very much difficult to fit into and sustain a culture which one was not part of its creation. The choice of successors should be done with extreme caution. I have heard new leaders bemoaning the fact that they are expected to behave like carbon copies of their predecessors.

Fair enough, no two leaders are the same. What one leader may consider important may not necessarily receive the same attention and emphasis from the other. The management of schools in our jurisdiction is compounded by the fact that there is no school leadership blue print shedding light and direction on the salient features of management and protocols, which everyone should observe and practice. Without a standard formula of school governance, much is left in the hands of God and/or to the ingenuity and innovative prowess of individual leaders. Innovations made by individuals or lack of account for the differences between one school and the other. This is the more reason why schools blow hot and cold depending who is in charge. It is therefore advisable that movements of school leaders while not disregarding other considerations should primarily be strategically driven with preservation in mind of a high performing culture on the one hand and dismantlement of a chronically low achieving culture on the other hand.

Where possibl,e no deployment plan should be conceived and pursued if it carries the risk of tampering and undermining a positive and enabling culture, which has served and adequately supported students. Moving successful leaders from one school to the other is not necessarily a solution but can be a problem. School principals in private schools can stay as long as they want provided they fulfil organisational objectives.

Those serving in public schools do not have that luxury. Private schools avoid like plague the folly of fixing what is not broken. Once a culture has been established, it is relatively easy for those who were responsible for its building to notice and remedy signs of cracks. But those alien to it may unwittingly preside over the demise and dissolution of a successful culture. The role of a school principal therefore is to stay alert and monitor closely the pulse of a school system. And this can be done with relative ease if oversight institutions provide the right support and do not do anything undermining performance.